The Daltons' Buick automobile

The Daltons' Buick automobile first appears as part of Bigger Thomas’s new work: he is to bring it out and wait by the side door for the family, and he is told that he will drive Mary Dalton that night. In Bigger’s hands, the dark blue car becomes both a mark of the Daltons’ resources and a confined, moving space in which the night’s racial tension and private intimacies unfold.

Appearance, Access, and Work

Peggy introduces Bigger to the garage and explains the routine: he is to bring out the car and wait at the side door. Mary is due to leave at eight-thirty, leaving Bigger free until then. The vehicle thus enters the story first as an object of household labor, tied to a schedule and to Bigger’s position as an employee expected to make the Daltons’ movement possible.

When Bigger later opens the garage, the lights come on automatically, a small convenience that again impresses him. He examines the car closely: it is a dark blue Buick with steel-spoke wheels, a new model. Its price disappoints him, but its color and style make up for that in his estimation. His inspection is practical and evaluative at once; he measures the vehicle against the affluence he associates with the household while responding to the visible appeal of the machine itself.

Bigger backs the Buick into the driveway, turns it around, and pulls it up to the side door. That maneuver puts him in the role Peggy has described before Mary gets in. The car is not simply displayed as Dalton property: its usefulness depends on Bigger’s ability to handle it, and his skilled driving becomes one of the first qualities Mary notices about him.

Driving and the Changing Arrangement

As Bigger takes Mary south through the city, he drives at about thirty-five miles an hour, accelerating at the beginning of each block and easing off near intersections. The measured description establishes that he handles the Buick confidently and attentively. Mary tells him he drives well, and he answers proudly. For a moment, the car makes his competence visible within a relationship otherwise defined by his employment in her household.

The arrangement changes when Jan takes the wheel. Bigger slides over, and Mary joins them in the front seat, wedging herself between Bigger and the outer door. The Buick’s limited interior space makes their physical arrangement immediate: Bigger is between two white people, with Mary pressed close beside him. As Jan drives back toward the Outer Drive and along the lakefront, the car carries the three of them past the darkly gleaming water beneath heavy snow clouds. Its route moves them through a landscape Bigger does not control, while its passenger compartment holds him in unusually close proximity to Mary and Jan.

Enclosure, Intoxication, and the Rear-View Mirror

Later, Bigger is driving slowly through a dark park while Mary and Jan drink from a partly emptied bottle of Rum. The car moves around the park’s sloping curves, and Bigger feels the effects of the alcohol spreading through his body. His attention narrows: he is no longer fully registering the park or the city, but experiences himself as floating along in the vehicle, hands resting lightly on the steering wheel.

The Buick’s rear-view mirror gives Bigger a view of the couple behind him. He sees Mary lying on her back in the rear seat and Jan bent over her; later, he watches them sitting up together after kissing. The mirror makes the back seat visible without bringing Bigger into their intimacy. He keeps looking from the road to the reflection, while his awareness of their closeness and his own intoxication grows. The automobile therefore functions as a divided enclosure: Bigger controls its motion, but Mary and Jan occupy a separate intimacy within it.

Narrative Significance

Across the evening, the Buick changes from a valued object Bigger inspects to the setting and instrument of a shared excursion. Its automatic garage lights, blue body, steel-spoke wheels, and responsive handling register the material advantages of the Dalton household; its seats and mirror, by contrast, organize the uneasy human distances within that privilege. The car gives Bigger responsibility and room to display a skill, yet it also places him inside a space where racial boundaries are felt through proximity, observation, and constraint.

The vehicle’s significance comes from these uses rather than from any independent choice it makes. It carries the characters from the Dalton household to the lakefront and through the dark park, while the changing drivers and seating arrangements alter who controls the journey and who is made to watch. In the rear-view mirror, the Buick turns that journey into a scene of divided attention: Bigger keeps the car moving while witnessing an intimacy from which he remains physically close but separate.